A new
Kickstarter is underway from Mad Otter Games to raise a quarter-million
dollars to develop an updated version of Red Baron, Dynamix's classic
World War I combat flight simulator, designed by Damon Slye, creator of the
original. They propose an easy-to-learn dogfighting game with a single-player
campaign, a persistent multiplayer world with no subscription fees or
pay-to-win, as well as a MOBA setting. They have put $250K into the project so
far, and say alpha testing is near. Here's a bit more:

Red Baron will hit
the sweet spot between simulation and game dead-on. We will emulate the controls
of flight authentically but with a focus on fun and intuitive gameplay. Our
design goal is to make it easy to play but hard to master.

You will be able to hop into your airplane and begin playing in minutes. The
controls will be intuitive and easy to grasp. You won’t have to have a degree in
advanced aerodynamics to understand how to fly and fight. Under the hood, the
game will be running a complex and realistic simulation, but we will hide the
complexities from new players and let them discover them over time at their own
pace.

We want to focus on an immersive and gallant flying experience. It is not just
about documental realism: placing every gauge, dial, and knob in the right
place, but about confronting the player with the same challenges and
psychological reality that WWI Aces faced.

The original Red Baron was amazing. As much as I loved the single-player game, I also played it online (ImagiNation Network, or INN). When I say played I mean competitively...leagues and all that, world rankings (I was generally top 5), etc. When most of the top players of today were in cribs I was shooting down aces twice my age over a 2400 baud modem on a state-of-the-art 486SX - those were the days. It was an experience to me only equaled or bettered by Battlefield 1942, but it stops there. Again, though, loved the single-player mode as well...one of the finest games ever made to be sure. Then again, that was a different era, when there were actually great flying games to choose from (the Aces games, Yeager, as well as all the classics, and much more). Therefore, yeah, hard to praise it as a stand-out unless you count the multi-player iteration.

(also, as many people mentioned, Realistic was the only way to play RB, and it was awesome)

CJ_Parker wrote on Oct 23, 2013, 02:54:Compared to the original Red Barons this looks very arcadey. I remember a very unforgiving flight model in Red Baron where you could have never pulled off any of the maneuvers that were shown in this clip. Your plane would have fallen apart.Also fully armed you had a climb rate of maybe 10ft per minute (slight exaggeration alert) in the original game and here it looks much more WW2-like instead of WW1.

Might all turn into a fun action flight sim but a Red Baron remake this is not.

Well there is always Rise of Flight. Ive never played it because I dont have that much interest in WW1 planes, but apparently its very very good. DCS: WW2 is coming out, as is Il-2: BOS, and there is always the very best in F-sims ever, DCS: World and all of its very cool modules. At this moment Im playing DCS: World to the exclusion of every other game out there. X-Rebirth and XCOM might change that, but if the advanced flight model for the F-15C comes out in the meantime...

Compared to the original Red Barons this looks very arcadey. I remember a very unforgiving flight model in Red Baron where you could have never pulled off any of the maneuvers that were shown in this clip. Your plane would have fallen apart.Also fully armed you had a climb rate of maybe 10ft per minute (slight exaggeration alert) in the original game and here it looks much more WW2-like instead of WW1.

Might all turn into a fun action flight sim but a Red Baron remake this is not.

Beamer wrote on Oct 22, 2013, 20:31:"Immersion" is ridiculous of a concept.

No it's not, it's that it's been hi-jacked by losers who think getting rid of huds and replacing it with regen health and bloodspats 'adds immersion' (aka taking every great videogame thing out to make it more movie like).

Immersion in the TRUE GAMER sense has always been about consistency. For instance having a pink unicorn show up as an end boss in diablo without any kind of build up (think cow level type deal) makes no sense and is 'immersion breaking'.

In the fag ass story gamer movie based sense it's 'anything that aesthetically offends my hipster sensibilities like the traditional quake/unreal HUD'.

I've never once played a video game and felt like I was actually there. I've never forgotten that I was sitting at a desk. I've been as immersed in blocky games like Doom or X-COM as I have been in stunningly photo-realistic games like Heavy Rain or Hard Reset (moreso, actually, especially since ambient sounds are probably more immersive than graphics ever could be, and those two old games had such wonderful ambient sounds.)

If you're so incredibly worried that the daisies on the hillside are photo realistic, then the immersion is already not there.

As a player, I should be way more concerned that a wolf pack of D3s just dropped out of the clouds on my ass and I can already hear the canvas tearing from the bullets ripping through the fragile wooden frame.

Hell, in modern combat dog fights, I've never been going so slow or low that I could count the individual pine cones on the trees.

Also, by that logic, I guess SH3 and 4 sucked because there wasn't marine biology in the ocean for me to look at while trying to take down a convoy without being depth charged to Hell and back by destroyers.

There's this thing called 'Immersion' though, by your logic why not just make everything flat shaded polygons? If your going to attempt to do something like convince me Im really flying a plane above the earth it kinda breaks it for me if everything looks 'funny'. Sorry its about the whole package. Either go for it or do something super stylized then

Wildone wrote on Oct 22, 2013, 17:08:I honestly thought that video was from 1998, the scenery sucks ass its like WOW cartoony style. With ROF & IL2 stuff out there I dont know..

When I am dogfighting for my life in a Morane Bullet, the LAST thing I give a shit about is how good the ground looks. Unless, of course, it is rushing swiftly up to meet me and insure my untimely demise.